Several Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators have proposed amendments to the Trade Secrets Act (營業秘密法), as the problem of Chinese firms poaching Taiwanese talent and stealing core technology poses a real and serious threat to Taiwan’s national security. While the wording varies, the drafts focus on toughening penalties, defining industrial espionage and identifying hostile foreign forces.
At meetings of the legislature’s Economics Committee over the past few weeks, the National Security Bureau and the Mainland Affairs Council have expressed broad backing for the legislators’ drafts, but the Ministry of Economic Affairs appears reticent to amend the act, saying that it has been bolstered over the past few years and that breaches should be examined on a case-by-case basis.
On the surface, Taiwan does have the laws needed to protect companies’ trade secrets and intellectual property rights, and the point, as suggested by the Ministry of Economic Affairs, is to promote enforcement of the laws. In a report to the legislature in late March, the ministry said that it had collaborated with the Ministry of Justice to detect about 20 Chinese firms illegally recruiting Taiwanese talent in the past few months, while the number of cases involving contraventions of the act had increased from 92 in 2016 to 160 last year.
As the conviction rate is low and punishments tend to be light, such collaboration is not enough to prevent China from stealing proprietary information and technology from Taiwan, but merely puts a spotlight on the local talent and technology that continue to make their way to China. For example, while the penalty for stealing trade secrets is five years in prison under the Trade Secrets Act, the penalty under the US’ Economic Espionage Act is 10 years. Taiwan’s courts are also more conservative and its judges tend to have a narrow definition of stealing trade secrets, leading to a conviction rate of only 10 percent.
There have been calls for breaches of the act to be fast-tracked through the justice system, as China’s infiltration of the supply chain affects everything from stealing trade secrets to poaching talent. Beijing not only aims to damage Taiwan’s economic interests, but also to weaken the nation politically, limiting its global competitiveness.
The DPP legislators seem to believe that high-tech secrets, such as semiconductor technology, should be given the same protection as national security secrets, similar to practices in the US or South Korea, but this raises new issues.
First, it would be difficult to define which core technologies required the same protection as national security secrets, and to achieve a balance between firms conducting business and the government controlling exports or authorizing technology transfers.
Second, if trade secrets were protected as national security secrets, any country that could potentially threaten Taiwan’s leadership in industry would require government scrutiny, not just China.
Third, raising business secrets from an individual or corporate level to a national level would make it easier to stiffen the penalties for stealing trade secrets, but it would also raise the threshold of proof required, as well as the time needed to investigate trade secret cases.
Whether considered from a legal or a business point of view, the Trade Secrets Act is far from perfect. Given the international political and business environment, there is room for improvement.
Regardless of when or whether the lawmakers’ draft amendments become law — Cabinet members and ministries have proposed further discussion on their wording — the government must protect Taiwan’s national security and interests, whether by amending the Trade Secrets Act, the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (兩岸人民關係條例) or even the National Security Act (國家安全法).
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
I have heard people equate the government’s stance on resisting forced unification with China or the conditional reinstatement of the military court system with the rise of the Nazis before World War II. The comparison is absurd. There is no meaningful parallel between the government and Nazi Germany, nor does such a mindset exist within the general public in Taiwan. It is important to remember that the German public bore some responsibility for the horrors of the Holocaust. Post-World War II Germany’s transitional justice efforts were rooted in a national reckoning and introspection. Many Jews were sent to concentration camps not
RSS